Union Minister and senior Congress leader G K Vasan today said the centre's stand in abstaining from voting on a US resolution on alleged war crimes by Sri Lanka at the UNHRC would not affect the party in the Lok Sabha elections.


"No way the Sri Lankan issue will affect the Congress in this election," he told reporters responding to criticism of the UPA government's stand by most parties in Tamil Nadu.

He said it was the Congress-led UPA Government that had allocated crores of rupees for the rehabilitation of Sri Lankan Tamils.

The resolution, which sought an international inquiry into alleged war crimes in the last stages of the conflict with the LTTE in 2009, was adopted by 23 votes.

Noting that the Congress was contesting the April 24 Lok Sabha polls in Tamil Nadu on its own after a long gap, he said the party's chances were bright.

He said during his campaign tour of the state, he could see enthusiasm among the Congress workers.

Attacking the Jayalalithaa government, he said it was suppressing the role of the central government in various welfare schemes being implemented.

Indian Coast Guard will hand over 17 Sri Lankan fishermen released from Indian custody and their 10 boats to Sri Lankan Navy at the International Maritime Boundary Line on Tuesday, Indian media reported.


India's move comes after Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, in gratitude to India's decision to abstain from voting on a UN resolution against Sri Lanka, ordered the immediate release of all 98 Indian fishermen and their boats detained by Sri Lankan authorities.

Complying with the President's order, Sri Lanka Navy Sunday handed over 19 Tamil Nadu fishermen and their 4 boats to the Indian Coast Guard at the International Maritime Boundary Line off Mannar.

It is expected that the President's gesture will prompt both sides to resume the stalled discussions between the fishermen of Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu soon.

The United States says that Thursday’s vote in the UNHRC, on a resolution calling for an international probe into alleged human rights violation in Sri Lanka, sends a clear message that the time to pursue lasting peace and prosperity is now and that justice and accountability cannot wait.



The US-sponsored resolution, promoting reconciliation in Sri Lanka, was adopted at the 25th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva today, with a majority of 11 votes.

Twenty-three (23) counties, including US and UK, voted in favor and 12 voted against it while another 12 nations abstained from voting on the resolution, which for the first time explicitly calls for an international probe.

“Today’s vote in the UN Human Rights Council sends a clear message: The time to pursue lasting peace and prosperity is now; justice and accountability cannot wait,” US Secretary of State John Kerry said.

He stated that the resolution reaffirms the commitment of the international community to support the Government of Sri Lanka as it pursues reconciliation and respect for human rights and democratic governance.

“That’s why the resolution requests that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights continues monitoring the human rights situation in Sri Lanka. That’s why it calls on the Office to conduct an investigation into allegations of serious human rights abuses and related crimes during Sri Lanka’s civil war. And that’s why the United States will continue speak out in defense of the fundamental freedoms that all Sri Lankans should enjoy,” he said in a statement, released by the US Department of State.

“We are deeply concerned by recent actions against some of Sri Lanka’s citizens, including detentions and harassment of civil society activists. Further reprisals against these brave defenders of human rights and the dignity of all Sri Lankan citizens would elicit grave concern from the international community.”

“The Sri Lankan people are resilient. They have demonstrated grit and determination through years of war. Now, they are demanding democracy and prosperity in years of peace. They deserve that chance,” Kerry said.

He further said that the United States stands with all the people of Sri Lanka. “We are committed to helping them realize a future in which all Sri Lankans can share in their country’s success.”

British aid worker Khuram Shaikh’s Russian girlfriend was present at the Colombo High Court today when it took up the inquiry into the killing of Mr. Shaikh at a holiday resort in Tangalle two years ago.


She was accompanied by officials of the British High Commission.

The 32-year-old Red Cross worker from Rochdale was stabbed and shot dead on December 25, 2011 allegedly by six men while he was holidaying in Sri Lanka with his girlfriend Victoria Aleksandrovna Tkacheva, who was beaten unconscious and raped.

It is believed that the brawl had occurred when Mr. Shaikh was said to have attempted to protect his girlfriend from the men who were sexually harassing her.

Mr. Shaikh’s brother Nasser Shaikh is also in Sri Lanka to attend the murder trial.

The Union Ministry of External Affairs has conceded that the Centre has been imparting long-term and short-term training in technical and non-technical streams for Sri Lankan Navy personnel in order to enhance maritime security in the region.





However, it has refused to disclose details of training modules and domestic locations where such training is being imparted on the ground that they relate to information shared with a foreign country and, therefore, exempted from being disclosed under the Right to Information Act, 2005.



Mayank Joshi, Deputy Secretary (Sri Lanka) and Chief Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the Ministry, had made the observation in reply to an RTI application filed by K.K. Ramesh, Managing Trustee of Tamil Nadu Centre for Public Interest Litigation, a Madurai-based NGO.



The CPIO also said All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Member of Parliament P. Venugopal, representing Tiruvallur constituency, had raised a similar question in the Lok Sabha and wanted to know the details of training imparted to Lankan Navy personnel.



Answering the question on February 5 this year, Union Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur had said: “Training exchanges are conducted regularly between defence personnel of India and various neighbouring countries, including Sri Lanka.



“Training assistance to Sri Lankan Navy officers is being undertaken by (the) government with a view to further enhancing maritime security in the region. Short-term and long-term training programmes, in technical and non-technical streams, are conducted for armed forces personnel of foreign countries, including Sri Lanka.”



The RTI applicant had made an identical application to the Union Ministry of Defence too. But it was rejected by its Under Secretary Prem Prakash on the ground that the information sought for could not be provided in view of the bar on disclosing classified information.



Nevertheless, armed with the External Affairs Ministry’s reply, Mr.Ramesh filed a public interest litigation petition in the Madras High Court Bench here seeking a direction to restrain the Centre from providing training to the Lankan Navy.



The case came up before a Division Bench comprising Justices A. Selvam and V.S. Ravi on Tuesday, and it directed the High Court Registry to post it before a Division Bench of Justices V. Ramasubramanian and V.M. Velumani on Wednesday.

‘God loves you more, daddy.... God loves them more. :')’ 17 year-old Maira Elizabeth Nari tweeted yesterday evening, few minutes after the Malaysian government formally announced the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 was ‘lost’ with no survivors.


Maira’s father, Andrew Nari was the Chief Flight Attendant of the missing flight and she has been tweeting about him daily since the baffling disappearance of the 250-tonne aircraft on March 8.

A court in Egypt on Monday sentenced 529 supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi to death after a mass trial, judicial sources said.




Islamist backers of Morsi are facing a deadly crackdown launched by the military-installed authorities since his ouster in July, with hundreds of people killed and thousands arrested.



The sentence was delivered in the second hearing of a trial which began on Saturday in Minya, south of the capital.



Of those sentenced, 153 are in detention and the rest are on the run, the sources said, adding that 17 others were acquitted. The verdict can be appealed.



Those sentenced are among more than 1,200 Morsi supporters on trial in Minya. A second group of about 700 defendants will be in the dock on Tuesday.



They are accused of attacking both people and public property in southern Egypt in August, after security forces broke up two Cairo protest camps set up by Morsi supporters on August 14.



They are also charged with committing acts of violence that led to the deaths of two policemen in Minya, judicial sources said.



The accused include several leaders of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, including its supreme guide Mohamed Badie.



Morsi, Egypt’s first elected and civilian President was ousted by the army on July 3 in a move that triggered widespread unrest across the deeply polarised nation.



Hundreds of people died in the August assault on the two Cairo protest camps and in subsequent clashes that day.



Rights group Amnesty International says at least 1,400 people have been killed in violence across Egypt since then, and thousands more have been arrested.



Morsi is himself currently on trial in three different cases, including one for inciting the killing of protesters outside a presidential palace while he was in office.



Morsi was removed after just 12 months as president following mass street protests against his rule amid allegations of power grabbing and worsening an already weak economy.

The Prime Minister of Malaysia has confirmed that new data has emerged which points to Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 having crashed into the Indian Ocean.


In a press conference this afternoon, Prime Minister Najib Razak told a press conference that the new information proves “beyond doubt” that the passenger flight had been lost and that it had to be assumed “beyond reasonable doubt” that no-one had survived.

He said: “I must inform you that according to this new data, Flight MH370 ended in the southern Indian Ocean.

“We deeply regret that we have to assume beyond any reasonable doubt that MH370 has been lost.”

The Malaysian Prime Minister said that satellite analysis pointed to Flight MH370 crashing in the southern Indian Ocean west of Perth.

Relatives of those on the missing flight were informed of the news by text message.

If confirmed, the news would be a major breakthrough in the unprecedented two-week struggle to find out what happened to Flight 370, which disappeared shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew aboard.



The developments happened the same day as Australian officials announced they had spotted two objects in the southern Indian Ocean that could be related to the flight, which has been missing since March 8 with 239 people aboard.

One object is “a grey or green circular object,” and the other is “an orange rectangular object,” the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

The objects are the latest in a series of sightings, including “suspicious objects” reported earlier Monday by a Chinese military plane that was involved in search efforts in the same region, authorities said.
So far, nothing has been definitively linked to Flight 370.

Earlier, Hishammuddin Hussein, Malaysia’s acting transportation minister, said only that “at the moment, there are new leads but nothing conclusive.”

A reporter on board the Chinese plane for China’s official Xinhua news agency said the search team saw “two relatively big floating objects with many white smaller ones scattered within a radius of several kilometers,” the agency reported Monday.

The Chinese plane was flying at 33,000 feet on its way back to Australia’s west coast when it made the sighting, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority said.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron says that he has secured the “full backing” of all European Union nations for the resolution against Sri Lanka co-sponsored by the UK at the United Nations Human Rights Council.


The United States and the United Kingdom in a draft resolution have endorsed an external investigation into the alleged war crimes by the Sri Lankan army towards the end of the Tamil civil war in 2008.

The move follows a recommendation by U.N. Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay for an external investigation into the matter. The report on the promotion of accountability and reconciliation in Sri Lanka was released on February 24, following her visit to Sri Lanka in August 2013.

Cameron said an independent investigation was the only way, since Sri Lanka had failed to address the issues of accountability for the past and bring about any kind of reconciliation.

Speaking to reporters at the end of European Council meet on Friday, Cameron said “I also raised the situation in Sri Lanka. As you know, this is an issue I care deeply about. I want to see reconciliation in the country, and that means properly addressing issues of the past. President Rajapaksa has failed to do this, so now we need an international, independent investigation into alleged war crimes.”

He stated that the UN human rights high commissioner has called for the invetigation, and that is what the UK co-sponsored resolution at the UN human rights council supports.

“Countries will vote on that resolution next week, and today I secured the full backing of all of the European Union for that approach,” he said at the press conference.

India’s MDMK has promised in its manifesto released Saturday that it would lift the ban on Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), if it takes part in government formation after the Lok Sabha polls.


The party, led by Vaiko, also said it would work for holding of a referendum on creation of Eelam in Sri Lanka for Lankan Tamils. According to MDMK, the referendum should be held in places where Lankan Tamils live.

The party has assured appointment of Tamils as ambassadors in nations having a sizeable Tamil population.

The MDMK also promised to work to force India to take severe action against Sri Lanka if it continues to attack Indian fishermen and also retrieve Katchatheevu -- an islet in Palk Strait -- from Sri Lanka.

In order to strengthen the country’s unity, the Indian Constitution should be revisited and the country be renamed as United States of India, and the party said it would strive for that.

The Chennai police on Friday arrested three men in connection with a credit card scam. One of the arrested men is wanted by Interpol as the Sri Lankan police have issued a red corner notice against him.


Based on the confession of Sivanesan alias Prem, a Sri Lankan Tamil, arrested by Central Crime Branch (CCB) sleuths a few days ago for allegedly using a skimmer to steal data from credit card users in the city, police teams led by CCB deputy commissioner of police S Jayakumar and assistant commissioner of police, bank fraud wing, Jaya Singh, arrested the trio from a house at Ramavaram here. They recovered three laptops, two encoding machines, mobile phones and 15 fake credit cards from the house.

Police identified the trio as Jayatharan Thambapillai, 28, a native of Trincomallee in Sri Lanka, and his associates V Navaneetha Raja, 37, and V Prateep Kumar, 28, both hailing from Sri Lanka.

Jayatharan told the police that he arrived in Tamil Nadu in August last year on an illegal ferry. Later, he contacted Navaneetha Raja and Prateep Kumar and stayed with them at Ramavaram and operated the racket.

Police said Jayatharan, a graduate in civil engineering, developed knowledge in computer and collected stolen credit card data from hackers. He was also regularly in touch with the hackers and exchanged information.

Preliminary inquiries revealed that Jayatharan was involved in several credit card scams in Sri Lanka. As he managed to evade police apprehension and stayed in hideout, the Sri Lankan police issued a red corner notice through Interpol in 2011.

India has declined China’s request for permission to allow four of its warships to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines MH370 airliner near the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago.




Indian officials on Thursday said China’s request to allow its four warships - including two frigates and a salvage vessel - to enter Indian territorial waters has been “politely turned down” since Indian warships and aircraft are already searching the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea around the 572-island cluster, The Times of India reported.



This came after the Indian forces strongly opposed the entry of the Chinese warships anywhere near the strategically-located Andaman and Nicobar Islands, where military force-levels are being slowly bolstered with an eye firmly on China.



 ”The Andaman and Nicobar command is our military outpost in the region, which overlooks the Malacca Strait and dominates the Six-Degree Channel. We don’t want Chinese warships sniffing around in the area on the pretext of hunting for the missing jetliner or anti-piracy patrols,” the daily reported, quoting an unnamed official as saying.



An Indian P-8I long-range maritime reconnaissance plane and a C-130J special operations aircraft, with electro-optic and infra-red sensors, meanwhile, will fly to Malaysia on Friday morning to join the international search force there.



The new region off Australia is now on everyone’s radar screens after two objects, which could be debris from the missing Malaysian Airlines 777-200ER aircraft, were spotted floating there by a satellite on Thursday.



“Indian Navy already has four warships (INS Satpura, Sahyadari, Saryu and Batti Malv) deployed in the Bay of Bengal and Andaman Sea in continuation of the search for the jetliner. Extensive air searches are also being conducted with three aircraft (P-8I, C-130J and Dornier-228) in the area,” said an officer.



China is also dispatching two aircraft to Malaysia to join the international search force that is now scanning the southern Indian Ocean off Australia for the missing MH370 jetliner.

Sri Lanka Navy have arrested 75 Indian fishermen and seized their 18 mechanised fishing boats on Wednesday, just days after releasing all the arrested fishermen from Tamil Nadu.


They were arrested while fishing in Sri Lankan waters near Katchatheeevu Islet.

Of the arrested, 25 were from Rameswaram and remaining from Jagadapattinam, Thanjavur and Karaikal, the PTI reported.

Sri Lanka had released 140 fishemen from Tamil Nadu two days back to facilitate the proposed talks between fishermen’s representatives and officials of the two countries to solve the dispute arising out of fishing in the Palk Straits.

Just days after repatriating 140 Indian fishermen Sri Lanka Navy has arrested another 75 Indian fishermen along with 18 vessels on Wednesday night for invading Sri Lankan waters.


The Navy along with the Coast Guard handed over 140 Indian fishermen with 31 fishing boats on 17th March to the Indian Coast Guard.

The navy personnel from Thalaimannar, Kankasanthurai, Kayts and Karainagar have arrested the Indian fishermen for illegally fishing in Sri Lankan waters.

The arrested Indian fishermen included 25 fishermen from Rameswaram and 50 fishermen from Thanjavur, Pudukkottai and Karaikal with 13 boats, according to an Indian media report.

Rameswaram fishermen were detained in Thalaimannar, while the others were at Kankasanthurai, the report further said.

The arrest comes a day after Sri Lanka released all 172 fishermen held in the island's jails and 31 boats as a pre-condition for the second round of fishermen level talks between the two sides to take place on March 25.

Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu J. Jayalalithaa demanded the release of all 177 fishermen, including five fishermen, who have been detained in a Sri Lankan jail for more than two years on drug smuggling charges, and 44 boats before the second round of talks which were scheduled to be held on March 13.

Indian fisheries officials believe the fishermen arrested Wednesday will be released soon due to the talks which are to be held next week.

Pakistani National connected to the recently detected consignment of 36kg of heroin was arrested by the Police Narcotics Bureau along with a local drug kingpin, police stated.


Customs on March 7, seized 36kg of heroin concealed within a container which was declared to contain iron materials.

The heroin was concealed within two bolted boxes while the container in question was inspected at the Orugodawatta container yard, Customs Spokesman Leslie Gamini stated.

The haul of heroin was brought to the country from Pakistan while initial investigations also revealed that the shipment was registered under the name of a Pakistani National living in Sri Lanka.

Investigations into the flight simulator taken from the home of the missing pilot of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 showed a software for five practice runaways, including one that belongs to Sri Lanka, foreign media reported.





“Among the software we checked so far is the Male International Airport in Maldives, three airports in India and Sri Lanka, and one belonging to the US military base in Diego Garcia. All have a runway length of 1,000 metres,” a source told the Malay Daily.



Police seized the flight simulator from pilot Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah’s house last Saturday before reassembling it at the federal police headquarters in Bukit Aman, where experts were conducting checks.



After 10 days of searching for the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, investigators have now conducted extensive background checks on the 239 people on board the plane, including the pilots, crew and passengers, the Malaysian Insider reported.



The US previously rejected claims that the plane could have landed at their base on the atoll in the central Indian Ocean, which is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.



The source said investigations were being conducted by the police together with the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission to obtain any clues in the search for MH370.



The Insider further reported that investigators are looking into the possibility that the plane could have landed at an airport where control might have been lax, or that it landed on sea, hills or an open space.



Police have opened investigation papers on March 8 into the crew and passengers as well as the ground staff who may have come into contact with the aircraft.



They searched the homes of Zaharie and co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid shortly after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak announced on Saturday that the plane had been deliberately diverted off course.



Although he stopped short of calling it a hijacking, Najib said the fact that MH370 had turned back and headed towards the west was in line with the deliberate actions of someone on the plane.



Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said investigations would cover all angles.



Putrajaya also appealed to the public not to make any assumptions based on police investigations.



The search and rescue mission for MH370 has entered a new phase with its areas being expanded to the Northern Corridor, covering Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan until the north of Thailand and to the Southern Corridor – from Indonesia toward the south of the Indian Ocean.



MH370, which was carrying 239 passengers and crew members, vanished from the radar about an hour into after taking off from the Kuala Lumpur International Airport en route to Beijing.